There are two TPY-2 (aka Tippy 2) radars in Japan to monitor North Korea. These are the same as those in a THAAD battery but configured for early warning. The THAAD battery in Korea also has one. These three should provide the early warning. If you are close enough to a launch site to use a AMRAAM then the shooting war has already started and it would be easier to use a JDAM to take out a missile on a TEL before launch. Here is the best site on the web for this type of info: https://mostlymissiledefense.com/

The TPY-2 can be used to provide the info for a cruiser or destroyer to fire a SM-3 or SM-6. The mode of operation is noted as "Launch on Remote." Don't forget any missile headed to CONUS will be fired with a northward trajectory to reduce the energy required to reach the target so the intercepts of these missiles would occur over China or Russia.

I have little doubt that under the right conditions the F-35 could shoot down a North Korean ICBM. Yet, that would be an extremely narrow window. Basically, you would have to be in the right place at the right time. So, while it's possible that hardly makes it practical.....

In short the F-35 would be far more useful. In taking out such missiles sites. Before they could launch their missiles in the first place!

"In 2014, the sensor-studded plane demonstrated an ability to track missiles, leading to a “tactically significant” improvement in targeting.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., raised more than a few eyebrows(and drew a few rolled eyes)when he suggested in November that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter could intercept North Korean missiles headed for the United States. Hunter cited analysis from Los Alamos National Labs and other sources, according to Inside Defense.

Turns out the F-35 may be an ICBM buster after all, or at least be helpful toward that end. On Tuesday, Northrop Grumman called a small group of journalists to its offices in Linthicum, Maryland, to show the results of a 2014 experiment conducted with the Missile Defense Agency, or MDA.

The U.S. has no foolproof way to down a North Korean ICBM. Physics says the best opportunity comes during “boost phase,” as the rocket is leaving the launch pad. But DPRK anti-aircraft defenses make it difficult for the U.S. to get a weapon close enough to do any good. That’s why the Pentagon is looking at elaborate, futuristic concepts like arming drones with missile-killing lasers.

But the F-35 is studded with sensors like no other aircraft, including the Distributed Aperture System, or DAS, a half-dozen 17-pound electro-optical and infrared sensors. These feed a helmet-mounted display that allows the pilot to effectively “see through the plane” and spot incoming aircraft and missiles.

In October 2014, Northrop and MDA launched FTX-20, an experiment to see, among other things, whether the DAS could track an enemy ICBM. They took data from the sensors, ran it through algorithms developed by Northrop and MDA’s Enterprise Sensor Lab, generated a 3D-moving picture of the missile’s trajectory, and conveyed it over the Link 16 tactical data exchange. This kind of targeting data can help cue the U.S. Navy’s anti-ballistic missile destroyers or short- and intermediate-range missile defenses like the Army’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, missile battery deployed in South Korea.

The F-35 sensors aren’t meant to replace the infrared satellites that detect launches, or the sea-based X-Band Radar that can feed targeting data about missile launches to destroyers. Rather, Northrop officials said, the DAS data would help the other missile-defense gear get a targeting track on a missile more quickly, improving the odds of nailing the shot.

“That information can go straight to the Patriot [missile system], THAAD, or anywhere else, who has communication with that platform,” John “Bama” Montgomery, a business development manager at Northrop’s ISR & Targeting Division, said on Tuesday. “You can give that information to a shooter. That shooter now has information to go and put his information in the right place. Thus the radar doesn’t have to search. It goes, ‘I know where it is; it’s right there.’”

The end result is a “tactically significant” improvement in targeting, Montgomery said. Just how significant? It took several years to figure that out, and that’s one reason why the news is only being released now. “We wanted to get our understanding of how this could change the battlefield. We’ve since done a series of modeling and [simulation] events and teamed with other governmental partners and industry.”Those numbers, he said, are classified. But: “I can tell you right now that this system, as depicted here, really does help the ballistic missile environment.”"

Corsair1963 wrote:I have little doubt that under the right conditions the F-35 could shoot down a North Korean ICBM. Yet, that would be an extremely narrow window. Basically, you would have to be in the right place at the right time. So, while it's possible that hardly makes it practical.....

In short the F-35 would be far more useful. In taking out such missiles sites. Before they could launch their missiles in the first place!

"IMHO"

Well, if you were looking for missile launchers, you would be, pretty much by definition, in the right place at the right time. If you can kill it before it launches, so much the better. But, if you detect the launcher by the smoke trail of the missile, being able to detect and kill the missile shortly after launch has great utility as well, especially if the capability can be had for very minimal investment.

wolfpak wrote:If you are close enough to a launch site to use a AMRAAM then the shooting war has already started and it would be easier to use a JDAM to take out a missile on a TEL before launch.

That'd be a good way to get a war STARTED. An F-35 patroling just outside NK airspace would be close enough to close the distance and launch against a boosting ICBM. Now if they had these they might have a better chance:

The F-35 could intercept a North Korean missile launch -- but it could bring an all-out war08 Dec 2017 Alex Lockie

"...But before a ICBM accelerates to Mach 13, it takes off the launchpad & lurches [wut?] up to speed & the entire missile, warhead, & all is together in a single target. At that point, why not shoot it down with an air-to-air missile from an F-35?

The F-35 as a missile interceptorThe US Air Force has had air-to-air missiles that lock on to hot, flying targets for decades, and an ICBM is essentially that in its first stage. And it's not just a theory. In 2007, Lockheed Martin got $US3 million to look into an air-to-air hit-to-kill missile system. In 2014, a test seemed to prove the concept....

...Rep. Duncan Hunter, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, was more open to speculating about why the Pentagon hadn't gone through with missile intercepting planes. "Very simple, what we're trying to do is shoot [air-to-air missiles] off F-35s in the first 300 seconds it takes for the missile to go up in the air," Hunter said during a November meeting on Capitol Hill with the Missile Defence Advocacy Alliance, Inside Defence noted. Hunter also pointed out that in some places, North Korea is just 75 miles across, well within the F-35's missile range, Aviation Week notes....

IMO, the journalist who wrote that story did no follow-up with any technical folks, nor applied any critical thinking to the statements by the Honorable Mr. Hunter. And I don't think Mr. Hunter knows what he is talking about, technically. That is, I wouldn't trust any numbers from the fellow.

In my opinion, an ICBM is going to climb out faster than an Atlas V 401, the single-core version of the Atlas V without any solid rocket strapons. The Atlas V 401 reaches Max-Q (Mach 1.6ish) around 90 seconds after launch and is at 42,000 ft. By four minutes after launch, the Atlas V 401 is nominally at 370,000ft. Realistically, I think one only has about two, maybe three minutes to intercept that ICBM with an AIM-120 or any other currently fielded A2A missile.

provides some trajectory data from the old Titan II ICMB. It has what looks to be a nominal trajectory on the left, and a "fast-burn" trajectory on the right.

At 60 sec the "standard" Titan II is at 10km altitude (~32000 ft), and the "fast-burn" Titan II is at 18km altitude (58,000 ft). By two minutes standard is at 52km altitude and fast-burn is at 84km altitude. I recall reading that the old AIM-54 Phoenix flew a ballistic intercept trajectory where it went up to around 100,000 ft. Does the AIM-120 go that high? And that would be near the midpoint, not at the end-game of an intercept.

The Titan II is probably a reasonable first-cut guestimate of the performance of an NK ICBM, assuming the NORK rockets are burning UDMH + nitrogen tetroxide and are not solid propellant, which would climbout even faster. Therefore, I don't think an F-35 has but two minutes from ICBM motor ignition to effect an intercept.

Take an F-16, stir in a little A-7, bake, then sprinkle on a generous helping of F-117. What do you get? An F-35.

From the PDF in my previous post, this graphic suggests that any F-35 CAP would have to be uncomfortably close to China and/or Russia, if not over one or the other in order to simplify the intercept problem as much as possible (i.e. make it more of a 2D intercept problem than a fully 3D crossing intercept.)

Take an F-16, stir in a little A-7, bake, then sprinkle on a generous helping of F-117. What do you get? An F-35.